PC Game Review: ‘Insurgency’

Insurgency is trying to revolutionize first person shooters, or rather to return them to their bare-bones simple and fun roots. The game does it oh so well and I have rarely had so much fun being oh so rubbish at any game. Never once did the temptation to rage-quit come into my head, even after ending up with no kills and a bunch of deaths.

The game is fast-paced and brutal for all, even the best players taking unlikely turns that lead to their demise. The individual game types are simple and to the point, rarely dragging on for too long. Weapons are satisfying, if few in number, but just varied enough, but you won’t be caring much about faffing about with them anyway. Game modes are satisfying and varied enough to keep you interested and entertained.

This game is the antithesis to Call of Duty and Battlefield. It simply celebrates its own toned nature, but has graphics just good enough so you see what you need to see. Not much of a HUD of any kind is present and very little information is on your screen. This leads to quite a bit of tension at first as you try to stay alive but not shoot your teammates. Because of the nature of the game, I found the players to more mature than in other FPS. There was never an urge to mute my teammates because of all their blathering on about irrelevant crap. Additionally, there was little screaming at people for being losers or lamers while I was playing.

It is very easy to wallow away the hours playing this game and having a blast of it. It is not very expensive either, appropriately. While there may be a few bugs kicking around, there are no game killers. The net-code is pretty good, but as you might expect, avoiding servers where you have over 100 ping is to your advantage when it comes to this close door-to-door combat.

This gameis charming, fun and simple to play. In a world where everything is getting more complicated and over the top, this is a welcome addition to the FPS genre. If you like first person shooters you owe yourself a go at this game.